5 Steps for a Rock-Solid Content Distribution Strategy

“It’s not the best content that wins. It’s the best promoted content that wins.” – Andy Crestodina

With over 4.5 million blog posts published every day, there’s only a fraction of content that we actually consume.

With numerous things being published every second, it is possible that even your high-quality content can get lost in the abyss of the internet.

Content creation is important but your content distribution strategy is equally important.

How can you ensure that your content is distributed effectively in the new-age digital landscape?

Well, that’s what we’ll unravel in this blog post. Let’s begin.

The basics of content distribution

In today’s context-inundated world, to reach the eyes of your audience, you need to strategically share your content with them in different formats sprinkled across channels. There are three channels for distribution:

1. Owned content distribution: Owned content distribution is when you distribute content on your own channels like your blog, email newsletter, social media, or microsite.

2. Earned content distribution: This is when others distribute your content or content about you, similar to a word-of-mouth recommendation. It can be through guest article contributions, retweets, mentions, or shares.

3. Paid content distribution: This is when you pay for content distribution. For instance, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) wherein you pay a certain amount every time someone clicks to view your content.

Delving into the types of content

Before you can truly understand how content distribution works, let’s understand the various types of content that you can create.

• Blog Posts/Articles: Your blog posts and articles help drive organic traffic to your site while educating customers about your products, brand, and expertise.
• White Papers, eBooks, and Reports: Long-form content is high-value content as it shows an in-depth level of expertise and industry knowledge which are key in a buyer’s decision-making process. You can distribute it as gated content on a dedicated landing page.
• Podcasts: Podcasts weren’t a big deal a decade ago, but now, there are over 29 million podcasts on the airwaves. It’s a smart idea to do podcasts and you can easily distribute them via SoundCloud, GoogleCloud, etc.
• Videos: More than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day. The popularity and accessibility of videos make them a must-use form of content in your marketing toolkit.
• Infographics: Readers enjoy infographics as they’re pleasing to the eye, easy to understand, and packed with valuable information. You can share them on your website, social media channels, or even off-site.
• Case Studies: They hold a substantial amount of weight with readers as they’re essentially your success stories that can help show the expertise of your company and its services. Similar to whitepapers or eBooks, you can distribute them as gated assets on dedicated landing pages.

5 steps for a rock-solid content distribution strategy

Now that you have clarity about the ABCs of content distribution, we’ve listed 5 steps for you to create your own content distribution strategy from scratch or tweak it accordingly if you already have one.

1. Understand your audience: To distribute your content, you need to know ‘who’ wants it and ‘where’ they are. Deep dive into your data. You can start by creating buyer personas that can help you distribute the right content via the right channels.

2. Audit your content assets: Take a step back and audit your existing content assets to figure out which topics you’ve already written about and which ones you can expand on. This step ensures you understand the gaps in your content strategy.

3. Choose distribution channels: Your content distribution channels are inarguably critical. When you know where your target audience is, it helps you know:

• where they’re asking/answering questions
• where they’re proactive

When you know the answers to these questions, you can double down your distribution efforts on those channels. Be sure to tailor your content specifically to each platform in order to get traction.

4. Create and distribute content: Based on the insights about your target audiences, the types of content they like, add a bit of your own creative flavor while creating content. Start your content distribution efforts organically from your own channels. Once you’ve grown it organically, you can reach out to thought leaders or share your content on communities.

5. Measure and analyze results: Make sure you measure and analyze weekly, monthly, or quarterly so that you can understand:

• which content pieces drive the most traffic to your website?
• which CTA worked the best?
• which content asset attracts the most sign-ups?

With all these insights, you can tweak your content distribution approach as needed as well as create a content repurposing strategy.

Content distribution isn’t rocket science, so don’t let it be the Achilles heel in your content strategy. All you have to do is follow the aforementioned steps, stay consistent, and you’d be on your way to being a content distribution samurai!

Wish to be a content distribution samurai? Let’s talk.